Final Fantasy Explorers will have about 20 types of playable jobs, this week’s Famitsu reveals. In addition to the already announced Knight, Monk, White Mage, and Black Mage jobs, Famitsu confirms the Dragon Knight, Paladin, Thief, Ninja, Red Mage, Time Mage, and Bard are also playable.

Players can assign a maximum of eight abilities to each button for use in battle. While the game itself looks like Monster Hunter, Famitsu describes it as feeling like a “lite” version of Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy XI. Character positioning is important, and an ability chaining system is also being implemented.

Once mastered, job-specific abilities can be used within other jobs. Ability costs vary depending on which job a given character currently has. A Black Mage, for example, will have black magic costs halved.

Final Fantasy Explorers is set on an island with various locations, and players will be able to walk to all of its adjoining lands.

A monster training element will allow you to befriend the beasts you fight. Since you have four max player slots, you can fill the remaining slots with monsters. For example, two human players and two monster players.

The game is said to last between 100 to 200 hours. Square-Enix is developing the game with intention of expanding it into a proper action-RPG sub-series of Final Fantasy.

A release date for Final Fantasy Explorers has not been announced. It will support both local and internet four-player co-op when it launches.

(Port begging: don’t repeatedly ask for ‘Game X’ to be released on ‘Console Y’. We’re sorry that ‘Game X’ is not available on the platform you prefer. But these requests are pointless and don’t add to the discussion. Understand that publishers decide on which console(s) they want to publish their games, and that their stance won’t change based on your comments here. Your best bet in this case is to contact the publisher directly through their channels on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or via e-mail.)

http://gematsu.com/ Sal Romano

Let’s not do that.

Seriously, it’s annoying.

https://twitter.com/Stealth___ Stealth

That is what gets me the most annoyed witht he comments here. Port begging and whining

http://youtube.com/miyabigaming 武神水樹

Hardware must be doing well if 3DS has been on top for so long

orzorzorz

god forbid that developers use different projects for different hardware

Daniel Masterson

3DS actually has pretty good hardware plus the battery life to back it up. I call that a win-win.

An Tran

I’m sorry, but what?
3DS hardware is nearly obsolete by today’s standards (heck it was sub-par back when it was first released) with abysmal battery life. I’m surprised Nintendo couldn’t get more battery power out of what they used.

Daniel Masterson

I never use the 3D option so I guess my experience with the battery has been better than most.

An Tran

Actually, many people don’t use the 3D and there are still plenty of complaints about battery life. I’m one of them.
Would’ve been nice if Nintendo could manage at least another hour off these batteries. Not to mention a sleep mode that doesn’t die so quickly.

Daniel Masterson

Ya that’s to bad. do you have an original model or the XL?

An Tran

Original. The XL doesn’t seem to be much better, but at least it’s an extra hour.

sakanaとkoeda

I’m sorry, but how much battery life do you want? Going without 3D, WiFi, and at the lowest brightness I can squeeze about 8-9 hours when I play on my XL. Plus the screen is larger than the original by a lot.

罪罰

Should have been made on PC

desponent

SE: “what is a pc?”

罪罰

>le what is PC xD
>le FF14 xD
fuck off already.

Nesther

>”a “lite” version of Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy XI”

Way to kill my hype.

http://www.gameanyone.com/DukeVerde DukeVerde

Lite version of Final Fantasy XI, huh… Well, I hope that means everything won’t beat the snot out of you if you try to solo. XD

Solomon_Kano

Sounding good, so far.

http://Gematsu.com Vayne

I’m hyped with this game.

Daniel Masterson

Its sounds great! now give me a release date.

Wolf Star

This sounds fun :D I’m glad I still kept my 3DS :3

kaotron

im waiting for Bravely default 2, it’s only reason I still have mine.

An Tran

So not as dynamic as MH or PSO huh? I’m disappointed, but at least it’s something. The only Targeting MMO-style game I enjoyed lately was Xenoblade. I’ll have to test FF14 when I have time to see if I’ll enjoy this game. Not entirely sure I would enjoy this type of gameplay much unless there’s a MASSIVE 3D open world to explore though, since I feel combat plays second fiddle to exploration in games with this type of battle system.
Aside from Xenoblade and potentially these MMO FF games, I’ve moved on from these ancient targeting and auto-attack games. I know they’ve evolved to make positioning important, but I prefer the full control and absolute freedom of movement that I get from true Action MMORPGs like Tera, Vindictus, Onigiri, PSO2, and even Avabel Online. And of course non-MMO console co-op ARPGs like MH, other Phantasy Star games, and the various ARPGs to grace the Vita.

EDIT: Whelp, other articles are making this game sound like it’s open world, so that’ll make up for the battle system for me.

An Tran

Basically a spiritual successor to Crystal Chronicles then.

Samsara09

Hmmmm,this is interesting.200 hours…

Invisbin

Dragon Knight? Strange.

An Tran

Dragoon for us English speakers.

Invisbin

Ok good I was kinda worried

Anime10121

Hopefully this works out better for them than Type 0 or Nier, which both initially started out as potential series as well.

Though with this being a game in the hunter genre I doubt it’ll be anything of interest to me…

Zackasaur

Nier. :’c

But Type-0 still could franchise. It needed a western release before SE could even consider it.

Zechs

So excited! They even have “monster training”! :D

Bobby Jennings

So SE can add online play to this but can’t keep BBS’s multiplayer function…

Hmm.

Zackasaur

Dragoon!!!

Vyse Legendaire

GOTY?

new_tradition

It sounds interesting. The little I played of FFXIV really appealed to me with the game play. If this is gonna be like an offline version, I’m definitely gonna keep my eye on the game ^^

Still hope there’s a decent campaign mode to play alone. Maybe we’ll have silent protagonists? I hope that might even mean character customization could be a thing :O